Sunday, March 25, 2012

Forgive and Forget

“God’s Amnesia”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

March 25, 2012

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Several
years ago when the news hit about the benefits of taking ginkoba and ginseng to
improve memory my parents immediately went out and bought some. They were both struggling with the memory
loss that can come with growing older, and if there was a natural way to help
stem the forgetful tide, they would willingly try it. There was only one problem with their
plan. They bought the ginkoba … but they
kept forgetting to take it. It seems
that in order for it help memory, buying ginkoba is not enough. You actually have to take it too.

Much
to my parents’ dismay, that has become a long standing joke in my extended
family. But I can’t laugh too hard at
them. I have my own issues with
forgetfulness as well. I have been known
to search high and low, and with increasing consternation, for my sunglasses
only to discover them on top of my head.
I’ve set my wallet and purses and other bags on top of my car and driven
off. And Alice can attest that when I’m talking
to someone, I constantly ask,” have I told you this story before?” Because I know that I’m starting to repeat
myself, and that completely freaks me out because that means I’m turning into
my mother, and that is a whole other story.

I
suspect that most of this is the natural forgetting that comes with age. And some of it is funny. But there are other kinds of forgetting that
isn’t. I read just a day or two ago how
scientists at MIT have discovered that blocking an enzyme, which is overproduced
in Alzheimer’s patients, could help in the treatment of this terrible disease that
affects over 5 million Americans alone.
Some forgetting isn’t natural or normal.

Even
though I hate how I forget things more and more these days, I wish there were
some parts of my life that I could forget.
There are things that I’ve said and done that still literally make me
cringe with embarrassment or shame. I
read once that it was believed that when we die, we review our entire life, as
though it were a movie rolling on a screen before us.

I don’t know how much validity
I can give to that claim, but I do remember that upon hearing that my first
thought was, “O boy I hope not!” Because
even though there are aspects of my life I’d like to relive – such as seeing my
kids being born – there are many other events I have no desire to see
again. I wish I wouldn’t have been there
the first time. I wish I could just
forget.

There seems to be a bad kind
of forgetting and a good kind. Forgetting
is the underlying theme that I hear in these verses from the prophet
Jeremiah. The context of this passage,
as I understand it, is that up until these verses God’s people have been paying
for the sins of their ancestors. The
people’s complaint has been that God never forgets sins of the past, and new
generations continue to pay for the transgressions of the old.

When will they stop being punished for the
sins of their parents? When will God
finally forget?

In
the verses immediately before our passage God is assuring the people that he
has forgotten. No more are you going to
be judged for the sins of those who have gone before you. No more will your teeth be set on edge
because someone in the past ate sour grapes.
From now on it falls on you.
There will be new life in your midst, God says. Humans and animals will once again multiply. I have brought judgment on you for your
wrongdoing, but I will also bring blessing on you. I have plucked up, but I will also
plant.

One commentator wrote
that God is reversing the previous relationship with Judah and Israel. No longer will their relationship with God be
based on disobedience, but on a new covenant.

Verses
31 through 34, which are the verses we are dealing with specifically with
today, are some of the most famous and most recognized verses from all of
Jeremiah. Many scholars see this as the
gospel before the gospel. God, speaking
through Jeremiah, promises the people a new covenant. And this new covenant isn’t going to be like
the old one. God took them out of Egypt
by the hand. God led them in what they
were supposed to do and walked them through how they were supposed to
live. God gave them the Law, but they
broke it and broke their relationship with him over and over and over.

In
this new covenant, God isn’t just going to give them the Law in document form. That Law will be written on their
hearts. That Law will be within
them. They will not have to teach one
another the law. It won’t be reduced to
a simple course of study. Teaching the
Law will not even be necessary. Instead
the people will fully and absolutely know the Lord. They will finally and completely be his
people and he will be their God. All of
them will know the Lord, from the least in society to the greatest. All of them will know the Lord. And God will forgive their iniquity, and
remember their sin no more.

And
remember their sin no more. This new covenant is God’s new amnesia. It is selective amnesia to be sure, but God
promises to both forgive and forget. In
this new covenant God’s memory for sin will be short. It is a new covenant based on God’s amnesia,
God’s willing decision to forget.

Now
what is a covenant? The word is used
over and over again in the Bible, but do we fully understand its meaning? Especially because we live in a world of
contracts. We live in a contractual
society. As one writer put it, a contract
specifies failures. Think about any
contract that you’ve ever entered into.
When I sign a contract with someone, I am agreeing to do certain things. If I fail to do those things, then I am in
breach of contract and could lose whatever it is that I have agreed to
lose. Whether it’s my job, my house, my
car, etc.

But
a covenant is something completely different.
A covenant doesn’t specify failure, it specifies promise. It specifies promise. It specifies the faithfulness of God, in
spite of how we go astray. It specifies that
God has promised to be with us, that God has promised to forgive our sins and
to forget them. But the covenant God
makes with us is not one-sided. It’s not
just handed down to us on high, and we’re in.
We have our side to uphold. We
are called upon to love God, to know God with our whole heart, mind and
soul. We are called to love neighbor, to
do what is right in spite of how easy it is to do what is wrong. We are called to give our whole lives to this
new covenant. And, perhaps hardest of
all – at least for me – we are called to trust that God will be faithful.

Other
differences that I see between contract and covenant are that contracts seem to
have a time limit. Contracts end. Covenants do not. The covenants that God made with Abraham did
not end when God made a covenant with David, and the Davidic covenant did not
end when this covenant was made through the prophet Jeremiah. The covenants of God flow into one another,
all finally being fulfilled with the coming of God’s son.

So
in this new covenant that we read in Jeremiah, it seems that God covenants, God
promises, not only to forgive our sins but to forget them. God covenants to develop amnesia when it
comes to the past.

God
forgives and forgets. Can we do the
same? As we move into these last stages
of the Lenten journey, can we both forgive and forget? Can we develop amnesia when it comes to the
ways we’ve hurt or harmed or disregarded one another? Can we be intentional in our forgetting just
as God is intentional in forgetting?

Think
for a moment about one thing that you would really like to forget. It could be something that you’ve done to
someone or had done to you; something you’ve said; something you regret. Whatever it is, find hope in the belief that
God forgets. God doesn’t forget us, but God, through grace, forgets our
sins. We are covered by God’s promise to
develop amnesia. That is our hope. That is our assurance. That is the new covenant in which we live and
move and have our being. Our sins are
forgiven. Our transgressions are
forgotten. This is the good news! We are
covered by God’s amnesia. Let all God’s
children say “Amen!”